


Haunted

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Time Turner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5930026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been fourteen years, and nothing changed.  He still thought he could see him out of the corner of his eye, and yet when he turned, he found him missing.  He discovered him still gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

TITLE: Hauntings

AUTHOR: Maple Tide

E-MAIL: mapletide@fastmail.fm

DISCLAIMER: The characters involved that are from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J. K. Rowling and all associated publishers (including Scholastic Press, Bloomsburg, and Raincoast). I'm just borrowing them for my own nefarious purposes. The plot involved, any stray characters that may crop up, and any other things that don't belong to her belong to me. I'm not seeking to make any money off of this; rather I'm going it for fun and for the chance to get it out of my own imagination before it drives me even more insane. Understood? =) Good. 

RATING: PG

CATEGORY: Angst

KEYWORDS: Sirius, Remus, apparitions, hauntings

PAIRINGS: Remus/Sirius

SPOILERS: PS/SS, PoA, GoF

ARCHIVE: Marauder Me. If it suits Azkaban's Lair, Nezad is welcome to it.

FEEDBACK: Please? I can be reached at mapletide@fastmail.fm

SUMMARY: It's been fourteen years, and nothing changed. He still thought he could see him out of the corner of his eye, and yet when he turned, he found him missing. He discovered him still gone.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This idea popped into my head and it wouldn't go away. This Remus wouldn't leave me alone until I'd written it, so I decided to go ahead and let him have his way.

**~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~** ~ **~**

It didn't start immediately after James and Lily died. If it had, there would have been no way Remus could have gotten through the first few days. It was only after he had begun the process of helping Dumbledore make certain there was a safety zone for young Harry that it started. Before he had started the project, Remus had thought of protesting, of saying that his old friends would not have wanted things this way, but he knew too well to think that his words would have even been heard.

After all, when Dumbledore had a plan in mind, he let none in on it unless it became absolutely necessary. It angered him, and that was the first emotion to cut through the dim fog of betrayal and grief that he had been cloaked in since the news had broken over them all.

So he bit his tongue, and let the bitterness sweep over him in his traditional silence.

There was no way even Dumbledore would turn the child over to a werewolf -- the word appeared as a dim red haze through his mind as he worked, building shield after shield -- even if he had once fought to allow him into Hogwarts, perhaps seeing in him some potential. The Ministry wouldn't allow it certainly, at least not now. When he had been in school, there had been **some** leeway for his kind, but after he had left school and entered the wizarding world at large, there had been no such kindness.

The memories fluttered through his consciousness, a background as he worked at those shields. Defence had always been a strong point of his, whether be it against the Dark Arts or in anything else. Strong on the defence, strong on the offence, that was the bonus of having one such as he on one's side.

Even Voldemort had recognised that, at one time.

As he wound the shields to a close, he brutally forced the memories away to the side where they wouldn't interfere with the ending of the work. Panting, he finally stepped away from the masterpiece, and turned to face Dumbledore. The old man had watched in silence as he did that work, and was now looking over it to see if anything else was needed.

After a moment, with nothing more done, Dumbledore turned back to him.

"Remus--"

He shook his head, a sad smile touching his lips, "It was the least I could do. Now, if you'll excuse me, Professor..."

With nothing more said, and nothing more needed, Remus turned away.

He mounted the bike that had once belonged to a friend of his, or rather, one he thought was a friend, and drove away. Unlike that **friend** , he preferred to keep the motorbike on the ground as much as possible, at least in the presence of those who would think it unusual. His talent had always lie more in subterfuge than the others, and this was one way he did have of fading to the backdrop.

Now that there was nothing more to distract him, the memories flooded back, and he let them. James and Sirius had been inseparable from the start, but it hadn't been James who had been his flatmate, who had known the inner workings of his life. Of course not; James had invited Lily Evans to come stay with him, of all of them, once they had left school, and then the growing apart had occurred.

From fifth year onward, his and Sirius's relationship had been-- He stopped the bike for a moment at an intersection, bracing both feet firmly upon the ground as he tried to contemplate that, then pushed off again when there was no sign of anyone else upon the roads. His and Sirius's relationship had been a tug-of- war, of sorts anyway.

Above all else, it defied description.

While saying that Sirius was one of his best mates was true, it was also true that there was more there. By the time he was a sixth year, he was tired of contemplating it, and just accepted it as it went along. Until James's discovery of Miss Evans in their final year, the Marauders hadn't allowed anyone else in their tight circle.

They looked, they noticed, but James's acceptance of the Head Girl had been the first step to a change.

Even so, it wasn't until afterwards, until they felt the effects of time lost to the war that things changed between the two of them. They were best mates, flatmates, and they were content to leave things that way. Still, tension had built, and Remus had sickened of it, and late one night he had made the first move.

Then everything changed. For the better at first, then for the worst, until they had stopped talking, until Sirius had stormed out and started up his motorbike, claiming he was going to call upon Peter for a time, and then--

Remus bowed his head slightly, without taking his eyes off the road. He stopped, forcing the memories back, and making a swift decision. The wizarding world had nothing more to offer him now, nothing at all. He would leave it behind, at least for a time. Long enough to find out who he was without the Marauders, as so much of his identity was tied up in that, and definitely find out who he was without Sirius.

That's when he first noticed it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something or someone. Someone, definitely, and the familiar scent ensnared his senses. He brought the bike to an abrupt halt, then, and turned to look where he thought he'd seen him. Only when he looked, there was no form clad in denim and cotton, no long black hair, no flashing eyes.

He scowled at himeself; Sirius was in Azkaban. There was no way he could have seen him anyway.

His mind made up, Remus Lupin drove away, trying desperately to push the scent and the image of Sirius Black out of his mind, but it took a long time for either to fade.

+++++

That might have been the first time the image crept into his head, but it wasn't the last.

Five years had passed since that first time, and there were moments where it was still there. Where he could see long black hair, and a familiar face. Time had brought that face gaunter, as he learned to wait and observe out of his side vision, if he didn't jump and turn only to find it gone.

Afterwards, his heart would race, and he would curse himself in every language he had managed to pick up along the way. Yet, there was no mistaking it, this was an illusion ravaged by time, an illusion he often thought of as his mind's refusal to let him go entirely. That thought often brought forth a rage that drove out everything else but that.

Sirius Black was a traitor to the brothership, and a traitor to the wizarding world at large. There was no reason to cling to this as he obviously was doing. Never mind the fact that he most frequently appeared just when Remus was as far from thinking of him as possible. He never thought of that, but just tried to use the rage to push it further away.

He hated him, he was guilty. Peter was dead, James and Lily were dead, and he was shown as having killed so many people, so why couldn't he just accept the facts and move on? Questions lingered in his mind, though, that he couldn't push away so easily, so he just ignored them, as he ignored the image that appeared to him out of the corner of his eye.

An illusion, an apparition created by his own mind. That's what the Muggles he had taken to spending time around would say, after all, and at the moment, it was the most convenient explanation he had. So he grasped onto it with both hands, and then wondered why the occasional flirtations held no appeal for him whatsoever.

He stopped briefly for a cup of tea in a small cafe half a world a way from where he had once been, and then kept right on moving. He had been called upon by a wizard in Calgary who had gotten his name from Albus Dumbledore for some Defence issues. That was all that had been said, and he had agreed to come, but as soon as he was finished with this consult, he was back to London where he belonged.

It was different here, and colder.

He shrugged more into the winter coat he was wearing and thought of how it was still thanks to Albus Dumbledore that he was receiving money for his work. Perhaps it was a remnant of gratitude for the work that he had done for him and the Order. It was easier to think that than it was to think it was pity, after all.

Remus Lupin had never been one to accept pity easily, if ever.

+++++

Seven years had passed between then, and when Dumbledore had called upon him to teach Defence at Hogwarts, where once he had excelled in the subject as a student. He took easily to the subject, and it provided a nice distraction, for now Sirius Black was loose and headed for Hogwarts. He knew he was there to finish the job he had started that day he had wrapped that house in Surrey in the best shields he and his magic could muster.

The distraction, however, was from the fact that those apparitions had become almost weekly, and he felt something in him twist and writhe at what he would see when he looked long enough. Sometimes it was the dog that appeared to him; a Grim that many would see as a prediction of his coming death, but that he knew too well to think it anything other than what it was. That dog was barely skin and bones and fur, as much as the man was gaunt and haunted and still watching over him.

Sometimes he came in dreams as well, reminding him of a promise that he would have thought to be the first one broken. A promise to help protect him whenever he could, told with fiery blue eyes that were so eerily like the colour of the sky that sometimes he flinched under their insistant gaze. There were times, too, when those dreams came to him at Hogwarts, in which cases he took to roaming the corridors.

In word, he was keeping an eye out for danger in an attempt to protect the students that had been trusted to their care. There was a flare of the old bitterness at that thought; they never would have trusted the children within the walls of Hogwarts if they had known there was a werewolf teaching them. Still, it was his own insomnia that drove him to it. Insomnia spawned from his own guilt, and the haunting that left him wondering after all these years, what it all meant.

At the end of the year, he had found out why, and given that knowledge, it should have been easy to let things go. In the moment, it was, but the resentment built over years took a long time to disperse. That is why Sirius didn't come to him that entire year, but communicated the way he had, unconsciously, for the entire time he was gone.

He could see him, out of the corner of his eye. The hair that had fallen to the gaunt hip, long and lank, was short again. His old friend, his-- whatever they had been was relieved by the lack, and working through his own times, his own hauntings. The separation, no matter how much he disliked it, was for the best.

Remus didn't immerse from the fog for nearly another year, and the first thing he was aware of was the familiar feel of the London flat he had lived in for most of the life he had made for himself after the war had ended. There was a cup of tea in front of him from a pot he didn't remember making.

There was a piece of owl post in front of him as well, one he hadn't even opened, but had his name scrawled across the front in that careless hand he knew so well.

After a moment of staring at it, he pulled the parchment open, and stared at the text for a long moment, written in that same hand. There was talk about what he was finding out, the situation concerning Harry, all written in the sort of casual way that one might address an aquaintance. That was easy, and he fell into the rhythm of that.

Then there was a spot of ink, splattered across the page as though he had hesitated, and then it began. Some of the worries, concerns, the things that had gone unspoken between them before. In those words, he started to recognise that Sirius was inherently unchanged from the man he had known.

There was a sentence his mind shied away from, only to notice another pause, a warning of his coming arrival, and the circumstances concerning it, which caught him sharp and unaware, before his mind started falling into the old patterns. It was almost wartime again, then. The letter fell short then, signed only with a letter S.

He sat back with a sigh, trying to let it all sink in. He was on his way there; Remus had no idea how long it would take him to get there. Still, after a minute, when he was looking over the letter again, the statement he had so studiously avoided seemed to call to him.

_So, did you forget about me all those years?_

Remus stared at the words for a long moment before running a hand through the shaggy silver-touched brown mane and letting out another long sigh. How could he have forgotten? After all, hadn't Sirius been the one to haunt him all those years?

A moment later, he thought he saw that same flicker of something out of the corner of his eye. Once again, as it had been through all the years since--

Only this time when he stood and turned to face him head-on, he was still there, dark hair, intense expression and all.

So what else could he do but smile and welcome him back?


End file.
